"When you're new to climbing, sometimes you get a little overexcited about meeting your climbing heroes. Once or twice, new climbers at my gym have, well, made a bit of a mess when Chris "The God" Sharma or Alex "Please Put Your Huge Biceps Around Me" Puccio drop by on their circuit. So, this is a story I sometimes tell the gumbies about the time I met one of my climbing heroes.

So, I'll preface this story by letting you know that I'm a serious business climber. Like, I climb 5.17d in my sleep. I'm that serious. Well, so about seven years ago I was involved in developing a new crag (you've probably never heard of it). Well, there was this one really cool-looking line that started in a cave, then rose up across a roof, and then right up a beautiful series of pockets. Pure climbing heaven.

Well, we bolted the line and got to working on it. We know it would be a hard one from the moment we first saw it, but damn, we didn't realize how hard it actually was. Day after day we worked it, but we made no progress.

Well, one morning, we arrive only to see this guy halfway up the line, maybe 15 meters up. He couldn't have given it much practice that morning, because it's just barely light out, and the sun wasn't even up. As we got closer, we could see that he was freesoloing it. Just running right up it.

Well, we watched him, totally amazed, as he went from two-finger pocket to pinch to 1 finger gaston, and finally tapped the anchor. Then he did the most amazing thing....he let go with his left hand, tapped something on his belt, and just....let go. Before we knew it, he had dropped all 30 meters to the ground and stood before us. He was covered in black spandex, and was wearing a black balaclava with what seemed almost to be ears. He just glared at us and, in a gravelly voice, said, "5.12d." My jaw just dropped. I was sure it was going to go at 5.14c or higher. This guy not only sent my project, but he downgraded it before I even got a chance to rate it. Total bullshit. I opened my mouth to ask him who he thought he was, but before I could finish my sentence, he growled, "I'm Batman." And then he clocked me one upside the head and ran off.

So, to this day, I tell this story to gumbies so they'll know that, no matter how cool they think it is to spot Chris Sharma at their gym, they'll know I'm cooler, because Batman sent my proj."

Yoo hoo Mr martym, thank you for posting that link as I did so enjoy it, but unlike you I found it more interesting to see that other cultures are equally well adapt at disparaging humour of the expense of their ethnic targets variety.
And here was I thinking that it was just Derek my M10 love, who was gross for that type of humour, amongst those I hear humour from.

That kind of link gets me to thinking, but here is an example of why it isn't always good to come to what appears to be a logical conclusion.

Vocation.

So there's three climbing mates sitting at the Bluies Mt Vic bar one night, all chatting about life
when a bloke in a suit walks in sits down and orders a scotch.
After a bit of debate between the three mates as to what the bloke in the suit
does for a living, the sport-climbing one of them decides to go and ask him.
So he strolls over sits down and says, “Hey there mate, we don't get many blokes
in here wearing suits, would you mind me asking what you do for a crust?”
“I'm a Logical Scientist”, says the suit bloke.
“I’ve never heard of one of those, what does a Logical Scientist do?”
“Well I'll give you an example, Do you own a goldfish?”
“Yes I do.”
“From that it's logical to assume you keep it in a bowl or a pond.”
“I keep mine in a pond”, he says.
“Ok from that it's logical to assume you live in a house with a yard.”
“Yep sure do.”
“From that it's logical to assume that you are married with a family.”
“Yep wife and four kids.”
“Ok so it's logical to assume you have a healthy sex life!”
“Yep three times a week, but you haven't answered my question, What is a Logical Scientist?”

The scientist says, “I asked you if you had a goldfish, and from that I deduced that you lived in a house with your wife and kids and you had a healthy sex life”.

The sport-climber goes back to his mates and tells them he is a Logical Scientist.
His bouldering mate asks what a Logical Scientist does.
“Righto I’ll give you an example, Do you own a goldfish?”
“No I don't own a goldfish.”

On 28/03/2014 ajfclark wrote:>Stumbled across this earlier in the week though it's probably not funny>if you didn't play street fighter:
I get it... but they're not climbing rocks... it might be rock hard, but it's not rock...